Showing 1 – 3 of 3 results.
Curated
Was Y2K Behind the Business Investment Boom and Bust? (ICPSR 1277)
Released/updated on: 2003-04-18
Geographic coverage: United States
During the latter part of the 1990s, United States economic growth was boosted by sizable increases in business purchases of information processing equipment and software, otherwise known as high-tech capital goods. Beginning in 2000, though, firms began to curtail these expenditures. By 2001, high-tech and other forms of business investment were falling sharply. Indeed, much of the downturn in the growth of United States economic activity can be traced to the sharp decline in investment spending. Several explanations have been offered, from the acceleration in labor productivity -- the so-called "New Economy" story -- to the stock market surge and subsequent collapse. One explanation that has not been explored in much detail is the surge in business purchases of hardware and software in preparation for the century data change (Y2K). Because many information processing systems and much of the hardware and software were not Y2K-compliant as late as 1998, it was thought that business investment in high-tech equipment and software would increase appreciably to fix this problem. Although solid Y2K spending data are lacking, the evidence presented in this paper indicates that the magnitude and timing of Y2K-related expenditures make it unlikely that the investment boom and bust was a Y2K event.
Curated
High-Tech Investment Boom and Economic Growth in the 1990s: Accounting for Quality (ICPSR 1263)
Released/updated on: 2002-08-13
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1990-01-01--1999-12-31
The rapid pace of economic growth in the 1990s was associated with an increasingly prominent role for investment, particularly for information processing and communications technologies. Given the evident pace of technological advancement in these sectors, official economic statistics have been constructed to take careful account of improvements in the quality of these high-tech capital goods. In this article, the author examines the possibility that this selective accounting for quality improvement has distorted the true importance of high-tech investment in recent economic growth trends. After constructing alternative measures of investment spending that are adjusted for quality change that may go unmeasured in the official data, he finds that the increasing importance of high-tech investment revealed in the official data is quite robust: The prominent role of investment spending during the 1990s, particularly for high-tech capital goods, does in fact represent a significant departure from past trends in the composition of United States economic growth.
Curated
Where's the Productivity Growth (From the Information Technology Revolution)? (ICPSR 1172)
Released/updated on: 1998-10-06
This research provides three explanations regarding low productivity growth from the information technology revolution: measurement difficulties, the small proportion of capital stock that computers represent, and the concept that diffusion of changing work methods is still under way.